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Android Distribution Updated for May: Kit Kat Up, Jelly Bean Down

Google updated the Android distribution numbers to start the month of May, showing a solid jump for Kit Kat (Android 4.4+) from 5.3% in April to 8.5% this month. Thanks to that jump in Kit Kat, we are seeing a small decline in Jelly Bean, from 61.4% to 60.8%.

The rest of the numbers all saw slight movement, as you would expect at this point in the game. Old phones continue to hang onto old builds of Android, like Gingerbread which dropped from 17.8% to 16.2%. Froyo and Honeycomb continue to stick on the list somehow, while Ice Cream Sandwich still commands 13.4% of the pie.

Those charts remind me the biggest flaw of Android ecosystem. Manufacturers locking down their devices at old releases. Phones should have at LEAST 2 year update cycle.

http://www.droid-life.com/ Steve B

They do….

Tomek G

Like who? Especially on Verizon network. My moto D4 got updated for barely a year. Especially now with heartbleed bug, it is painful fact

http://www.droid-life.com/ Steve B

Haha, pretty much any device not on the Verizon network.

This isn’t a flaw of the Android ecosystem, this is a flaw in Verizon’s update policy.

Adam Marr

Sorry… how is heartbleed related to your device updates?

Tomek G

because if manufacturer doesn’t update device, you won’t get the patch

Tomek G

Directly. My device is and will be vulnerable because manufacturer and carrier are more interested in selling me device than fixing existing

Tomek G

My Droid 4 didn’t, if not CM then I would be stuck in dark ages

AbbyZFresh

I’m just here to see how much Gingerbread went down. lol.

So far. Still too slow to die.

Jeremy Gross

Still on 4.1.2…..

Akiih

Still using Gingerbread 2.3.3 .. Yeah.

http://people.ign.com/mrfrodo24 MrFrodo24

Can’t even see the honeycomb sliver. Might as well just stop reporting it.

http://www.droid-life.com/ Steve B

Those manufacturers should be ashamed.

http://people.ign.com/mrfrodo24 MrFrodo24

Like they care. They clearly have forgotten about those devices.

Johnny Steele

With the jump in Jelly Bean and KitKat, I am kind of surprised that there is still Gingerbread. EDIT: That much Gingerbread.

AbbyZFresh

In my home country in Africa(I live in America now), there are still ALOT of old smartphones still being sold and used constantly until today. People use it primarily for FB and texting. Google Play is hardly used, nor seen at all. People don’t have much inscentive to upgrade to KitKat unless you’re wealthy to buy a Samsung or Lenovo phone.

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

Not sure why we keep track of these statistics since they always look the same. The newest version will never be on the most devices……. Ever.

WitnessG

I wonder what percentage of the kit kat devices are from custom roms.

Jeffrey Fazal

I am still
running Android 4.2 Jelly bean version on my two year old HTC Droid DNA which
is right now placed on wireless charger . However, the latest 4.4 KitKat version is available for it but I
am not interested to update. According to me it is quite easy to use 4.2 Jelly
Bean as compare to other versions.

Matthew Mascarenas

The dna has not been out 2 years (18 months) just saying… Although I do see your point..

Les A Lancaster

my Aunty Evelyn just
got an awesome silver Infiniti QX50 SUV by work parttime using a lap-top…
website here W­o­r­k­s­7­7­.­Ｃ­Ｏ­Ｍ­

Matthew Morrison

16% Gingerbread???!!

cjohn4043

Every time these android distribution charts come out, I can’t believe a month has passed.

Colton

it’s actually funny to think about:
my first android phone was on gingerbread (droid X2) and I remember looking at the iPhone and the X2 and I was drawn to gingerbread so much more! Now on KitKat, it’s just weird to see the appeal in gingerbread. But in a good way!

michael arazan

I jumped from the D1 Froyo to a Gnex with ICS, I felt like I was time traveling with technology and innovation, really felt the WoW factor with innovation for the first time ever.

Ashadeep Das

How did u upgrade to kitkat m using lenovo p780 n m a 4.2.1 user I wanna have change plz can u help me

Ashadeep Das

Plzz help me

yodatom10

Who the hell is still on Honeycomb

khha4113

Only old tablets that their manufacturers never update.

Kevin

First Gen Google TV users.

Diego Diaz

I have an old Toshiba Thrive that is stuck on Honeycomb. I use it primarily for media watching on the bigger screen when traveling. Also my Logitech Revue…

Arty McBert

I think Android 4.3 is still the best version of Android. 4.4 totally screwed up when they removed the text wrapping feature and messed around with some other things. I wish there was a way around that, but modders still haven’t fixed it and we all know Google doesn’t give a rat’s ass about customer complaints.

Gideon Waxfarb

I’m running 4.3 on some of my devices and 4.4 on others. I barely notice a difference, except that the Contacts screen is worse in 4.4. It’s quite a shift from the days when Android updates used to mean something.

n11

Sorry about about the 0.1% on Honeycomb, I’ll tell my friend to upgrade his tablet then the chart will be clean.

Still so sad remembering how big of a deal Motorola was making it out to be.

hkklife

Tons of tablets released in 2011 never got updated to ICS or beyond. All of HTC’s initial tablet efforts, for example.

Hershel

Htc wasn’t the only one

Droid Ronin

I think it’s about time for those Froyo folks to upgrade their phones.

jimt

I would love to upgrade my OG droid to Kit Kat but Evil Red said Froyo was it. /s

Lucky Armpit

That’s one thing that irritates me about Android – these discounted/free Galaxy S2 phones being sold/given away at Wal Mart (for example) that continue to have Froyo or GB on them. I’m like come on people, you can get a much better phone with a more recent OS for $99 – or even less than that in most cases. I had a guy at work come up to me complaining about our mobile app not working. He had a Samsung Infuse – never heard of it before. I kinda rolled my eyes and wanted to tell him it’s way past time to upgrade but of course I can’t say that. And we had a customer complain about our app on a Samsung Rugby. I’m like WTF is a Samsung Rugby? Came with GB if I recall correctly, and will be forever stuck there. Please people… get a new phone. GB is almost 4 years old. That’s an epoch in electronics.

moew

A friend had a rugby
He throws phones
The rugby has a survived years of abuse.

You must be new to smart phones sir.

Lucky Armpit

Hardly. Been around smartphones since the HTC Droid Eris. If you have a friend that “throws phones”, perhaps he needs to attend some anger management classes, and that way he can buy himself a real smartphone and not one stuck in 2011.

moew

I’ll send you his number so you can suggest your opine. THANKS MISTER 2011!

Nic

If its the Samsung Rugby its a flip phone, if its the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro it launched in 2012 with ICS, and the off chance thats its a Samsung Rugby Smart all i can say is, dear god why.

Alan Paone

I feel so sorry for those froyo-toting folks, but that kitkat jump is pretty impressive.

Pearl Carry

My Uncle Caleb just got red Ford Focus ST
by working off of a computer. try this C­a­s­h­D­u­t­i­e­s­.­ℂ­o­m

Nic

I still have a phone running froyo but its just audio book player. So I’m part of the one percent.

Ben

Yeah I’ve got a T-Mobile G2X running Gingerbread that does basically the same thing. An MP3 player for my stereo, basically. But it jumps on Google Play to update apps, so I’m in that GB percentage.

NorCalGuy

It would be interesting to know about how many phones/ tablets are used to get these numbers

Daeshaun Griffiths

Every device that connects to the Google play store gets included in this chart.

NorCalGuy

So is that 10, 10 thousand, 10 million, 10 billion?

T4rd

Eleventy billion phones..

NorCalGuy

Y not eleventy gajillion

ynksbsbll2

That’s not even a real number…yet

moew

Gagillion
There I made it real.

http://twitter.com/geoff5093 Geoff Johnson

This is one area where I’m jealous of iOS.

chris125

Eh with more apps being available via play store, OS updates aren’t *as* important as they once were

http://twitter.com/geoff5093 Geoff Johnson

I do agree, that’s what I tend to use as my argument towards Android OS updates, but I’d still love if Google could push out OS updates themselves and didn’t have to rely on carriers.

chris125

Oh I agree 100%. If apple can do it, google should be able to without dealing with carrier slow downs

Nikuliai

it’s not just carriers, manufactors modify the operating system to offer their own custom Android phones, so it’s not like Google can just push updates, the issue is the fact that the manufactor can do whatever he wants

Gfunk81

It’s not Google, manufacturers use different hardware/skins that Android has to be adapted for. Apple is in control of their hardware and software. Google is just on the software end of the game.

chris125

I understand that, but maybe the skins should be through the play store and then google could update all devices sort of how computers do it

cadtek91

Until those apps require an Android version of 4.0 or higher.

John Davids

I will take laggy updates over a fiercely guarded walled-garden any day of the week.

needa

IOS updates matter not if you are a phone behind or more. Android gets better, while ios slows down. Three seconds to open the dialer on an iPhone 4 running ios7. I dunno about you, but that’s ridiculous.

chris125

I think that is apples biggest strength and weakness, the super long support. I mean the iPhone is 4 years old. No android device gets that type of support. Hardware can only do so much, even with the most optimized software

needa

That’s just it though. It’s optimized for their current hardware. Ios 7 added better than half a sec to all apps and 1.5 secs to the dialer. That’s is over ios 6. Which was slower than 5 which was…
Don’t get me wrong… Ios has its place. My mother loves my old iPhone. But for updates… They both have their pros and cons.

Tee

And if you have an older device you don’t get all the latest features either. For example, my iPad2 has iOS7 on it but doesn’t have Siri or other features that the newer iPads have.

AbbyZFresh

My Galaxy S2 on JellyBean would beg to differ. It ran HORRIBLE on JellyBean compared to when I had Gingerbread on it.

needa

and my s2 (i777) would differ from yours. it ran/runs great on jb. although i generally ran roms on it. aokp and modified touchwiz.

mrisco11

THIS! I had recently had to revert to an iPhone 4 for a bit and it was on the latest version of iOS 7. It was borderline unusable. Trying to simply scroll on a webpage was so laggy the phone thought I was trying to copy text. I have since “upgraded” to an iPhone 5 with a broken screen. Haven’t had an Android since the Gnex but would love to come back when I have a true upgrade available at the end of this year.

Fresh360

iOS updates are misleading because your device may be on the latest build but you may not have all the features. So technically Google could do this also say everyone is on KitKat but phones older than 2years old won’t have on screen keys, Lockscreen widgets, etc. If you are on 4.0 or higher you are golden, Google Play Services for the most part beat the fragmentation argument to within an inch of it’s life.

hkklife

Yes but the fact of the matter is that an ancient iPad 2 or iPhone 4 on iOS 7 can at least download all of the latest apps regardless. Whereas you can have an absolute power house of a beast like the Note 3 on Verizon and still be unable to install any KK-specific apps, for example.

Fresh360

I am by no means an expert on iOS but I do know there are apps that my friend can not get on his iPhone4 even though he has iOS 7 also he had to pretty much wipe his phone to even download iOS7 because of space restrictions. I have never had that paticular issue.

*Also what Apps are you having issues downloading most new apps are 4.0+ compatible. KK specific apps are few and far between I have never had any issues with apps (I know my expereince is not everyones) and I am on Jelly Bean running on a VZW Gnex.

wagner

please get a LG G2. You will thank yourself later.

CasperTFG

Yes! I thought I was the only one with a Verizon Gnex running JB. With Xposed of course.

Eric R.

You may be able to run apps on those devices , but you can’t run them well. I have an iPad 2 and I don’t use it anymore since iOS 7 because of this reason and its just ugly.

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